ABSTRACT
SCHETZINA, CATHY ANNE. The Quest for the Mechanical Muse: Thomas Pynchon
and Science. (Under the direction of Nick Halpern).
This thesis explores Thomas Pynchon's philosophy of science as evidenced by the
thematic and literary role of science in Gravity's Rainbow and Mason & Dixon. His
treatment of science in these novels amounts to a call for intellectual revolution on a
grand scale, as Pynchon takes aim at the Western world's all-pervasive faith in the
scientific enterprise, made dominant during the Enlightenment, which he associates with
a blind reliance on binary oppositions, belief in cause-and-effect and faith in reason.
Pynchon associates this cultural construction, which I refer to throughout the thesis as
Science, with a range of abstract systems that, when imposed upon humanity, prove to be
both oppressive and destructive. In Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon depicts the destruction
that has resulted from the use of science, creates a symbolic order that challenges the
dominance of Science and urges traversal of the boundaries it dictates and subversion of
the binary oppositions that characterize it. Mason & Dixon neatly enriches the symbolic
order created in Gravity's Rainbow, having at its center an iconic representation of the
Enlightenment enterprise and that of Science. Taken together, the novels provide both a
critique and an apologia of the trajectory of science in the twentieth century, along with a
symbolically articulated plea for revolution.
The Quest for the Mechanical Muse: Thomas Pynchon and Science
by
CATHY A. SCHETZINA
A thesis submitted to the Graduate Faculty of
North Carolina State University
in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the Degree of
Master of Arts
ENGLISH
Raleigh
2004
APPROVED BY:
________________________________ _________________________________
________________________________
Chair of Advisory Committee
BIOGRAPHY
Cathy Schetzina grew up in Cary, North Carolina. She received her BA degree in English with
honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She currently lives in Raleigh with
her two dogs.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank Nick Halpern for providing encouragement and inspiration, both
intellectually and personally, throughout my coursework and beyond; John Morillo for his
enthusiasm and willingness to guide me through the thesis process; and John Kessel for the
generous contribution of his knowledge of science in literature. I would like to thank all of my
readers for their careful reading and insightful comments.
Personally, I would like to thank Julep, Manni and Benjamin for their patience, loyalty and
unwavering affection. To my father, mother and sister I owe a debt of gratitude that cannot be
repaid. This work is dedicated to them.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
List of Figures.....................................................................................................................v
Introduction..........................................................................................................................1
I.
The Revolutions in Physics....................................................................................10
II.
Gravity's Rainbow..................................................................................................22
III.
Mason & Dixon......................................................................................................46
IV.
Conclusion.............................................................................................................61
Works Cited.......................................................................................................................65
iv
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1.
Conical Shape of Narrative in Gravity's Rainbow.....................................68
Figure 2.
Diagram of Black Hole..............................................................................69
Figure 3.
Diagram of Schwartzchild Black Hole......................................................70
v
Introduction
Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow begins with a quote asserting the power of
science to inspire belief in immortality. For Pynchon, it appears also – or perhaps instead
– to inspire literary creation. All of Pynchon’s novels are riddled with references to
science, mathematics and technology. As he employs these concepts in the service of
literary art, they become essential to his narratives, assuming nonliteral values and
meanings and becoming central to the – often futile – quest for answers to questions of
life and mortality. Gravity’s Rainbow and Mason & Dixon are singular among
Pynchon’s novels in that scientific endeavors additionally form the impetus for their
narratives, making them ideal subjects for a study of the role of science in Pynchon’s
novels.
In Gravity’s Rainbow, we follow Slothrop, -- a science experiment gone wrong –
across war-torn Europe, surrounded by a cast of characters who seek to gain power
through various uncoordinated scientific endeavors as their continent and countrymen fall
down around them. The serpentine plot is filled with scientific theory and the novel’s
ultimate power product of human creation, the V2 rocket, is incessantly sexualized.
Mason & Dixon provides a glimpse of science and its seekers at the height of the
Enlightenment, with the turbulent politics of the New World simmering as the novel’s
title characters' own scientific aspirations play out. Though questions of morality, religion
and political power constantly challenge and offset the concept of scientific progress,
1
science forms the central impetus of the narrative and inspires the dialogue that embodies
Mason and Dixon’s intimate friendship.
This thesis explores Pynchon's philosophy of science as evidenced by the
thematic and literary role of science in Gravity's Rainbow and Mason & Dixon. Various
analyses of Gravity’s Rainbow and, to a lesser extent, Mason & Dixon, have explored the
presence of individual scientific theories in the novels. While many correlations have
been noted, critics have been less forthcoming in addressing how the concepts from
science and math function in relation to Pynchon's overall philosophy of science. In the
current study I will be describing the parallels between science and literature and
selectively cataloguing the presence and use of scientific theory in Pynchon’s novels as a
means through which to elucidate the significance of the interactions between scientific
and alternate ways of knowing within Gravity’s Rainbow and Mason & Dixon.
Pynchon’s fascination with the interplay between science and literature is
indicative of a deeper interest in epistemological boundaries and their traversal. Pynchon
explores various scientific paradigms and strategies, making use of carefully chosen
concepts from science and mathematics to illustrate their limitations, and make his
arguments for possible alternatives.
As I will illustrate in detail, Pynchon's treatment of science in the novels
replicates the structure of scientific revolutions as described by Thomas Kuhn in his 1962
book of the same name. Kuhn argues that the majority of scientific endeavors fall into
the category of what he calls "normal science," the function of which is to confirm and
articulate the reigning paradigm of the relevant scientific discipline. Scientific research is
2
generally designed to produce a result that is anticipated in advance, and those endeavors
that fail to produce the expected result are generally viewed as failed attempts. As Kuhn
explains, "[O]ne of the things a scientific community acquires with a paradigm is a
criterion for choosing problems that, while the paradigm is taken for granted, can be
assumed to have solutions. To a great extent, these are the only problems that the
community will admit as scientific or encourage its members to undertake" (37). Thus
the scientific enterprise as described by Kuhn tends to exclude those areas of inquiry that
cannot reasonably be explained by the given paradigm.
Despite the very non-revolutionary operations of normal science, scientific
revolutions do, of course, take place, and these begin with the awareness of anomaly,
"with the recognition that nature has somehow violated the paradigm-induced
expectations that govern normal science" (53). Anomaly then sometimes inspires crisis,
which in the most extreme cases results in production and adoption of a new paradigm.
Pynchon's treatment of science in Gravity's Rainbow and Mason & Dixon
amounts to a call for intellectual revolution on a grand scale. Pynchon seeks not to
challenge merely a scientific paradigm, he takes aim at the scientific paradigm, which I
will refer to throughout the thesis as Science. Pynchon identifies Science with the
cultural understanding of the scientific enterprise, made dominant during the
Enlightenment, which he associates with a blind reliance on binary oppositions, belief in
cause-and-effect and faith in reason, to the exclusion of anything that is not amenable to
3
investigation by the scientific method1. Pynchon's version of Science, as such, is a
cultural construction, but one which informs the worldview of his scientist and nonscientist characters alike. Pychon takes aim at this classical, Newtonian understanding of
the universe and illustrates how deeply embedded Science is in Western culture and
thought, despite potential challenges raised by twentieth-century science proper and
physics in particular. Pynchon associates Science with a ranges of abstract systems, most
menacingly, the military-industrial complex depicted in Gravity's Rainbow, that, when
imposed upon humanity, prove to be both oppressive and destructive. While Pynchon
demonstrates a knowledge of the changes in physics and cosmology that occurred
through the second half of the twentieth century, the Science he identifies with the
military-industrial complex and in which he argues Western thought is entrenched is
essentially identical to that depicted in Mason & Dixon.
Pynchon turns his attention to the boundaries and limitations of Science and
highlights entire realms of human experience that it simply ignores. While many have
cautioned against the expectation that scientific principles will hold when applied to
social and moral problems, Pynchon’s work insists on such application to the extent that
the failure of scientific principles to remain valid in a social context suggests a failure of
science and dictates knowledge boundaries that Pynchon is keen to traverse. Pynchon
seeks a way of knowing that will prove equally valid when expressed mathematically as
when applied to matters of the human heart. In the absence of such an epistemology,
Pynchon launches an all-out attack on the overarching scientific paradigm that has
1
Pynchon's critique of Science and identification of its characteristics with those of the Enlightenment project shares
some basic ideas in common with postmodern philosophy and deconstruction, and the work of Jacques Derrida in
particular.
4
dominated Western culture since the Enlightenment despite the presence of anomalies
and theories that challenge it.
Kuhn's description of the structure of scientific revolutions describes how
scientific change occurs. In seeking to invalidate Science, Pynchon mimics the structure
of scientific revolutions as defined in Kuhn, just as he makes use of metaphors created
using ideas from science and math. In other words, Pynchon uses science in his efforts to
debunk Science, which illustrates a deep ambivalence about the scientific enterprise.
Gravity’s Rainbow's exploration of the changes wrought in science in the
Enlightenment period through the middle of the twentieth century, as well as the limits of
such knowledge, is poignantly offset by Mason & Dixon’s more intimate and coherent
depiction of Mason and Dixon’s optimistic stargazing and boundary-making endeavors of
the eighteenth century. In Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon depicts the destruction that has
resulted from the use of science and creates a symbolic order that challenges the
dominance of Science and urges traversal of the boundaries it dictates and subversion of
the binary oppositions that characterize it. Mason & Dixon neatly enriches the symbolic
order created in Gravity's Rainbow, having at its center an iconic representation of the
Enlightenment enterprise and that of Science. Taken together, the novels provide both a
critique and an apologia of the trajectory of science in the twentieth century, along with a
symbolically articulated plea for revolution.
In seeking to dethrone the reigning scientific paradigm of Western thought,
Pynchon assumes a certain authority that strict disciplinary boundaries would deny him.
While disciplinary purists may scoff at investigations of parallels between science and
5
literature, links between major changes in modern physics’ conception of the universe
and corresponding changes in literary form have been noted by various critics (among
them Alan J. Friedman, Carol C. Donley and N. Katherine Hayles). The correlations
between the development of relativity theory, thermodynamics and quantum mechanics
in physics and the changes in literary and artistic form in modernism and postmodernism
in the twentieth century are persuasive. The dramatic change in worldview represented
by these advances in physics theory is evident in a broad range of literature and even in
the writing of authors who, unlike Pynchon, know very little of science2.
Consequently, discussions of parallels across disciplines should not be based on a
premise of influence that necessarily assumes a causal relationship between scientific and
literary changes. Rather, the simultaneous evolution of parallel concerns and ideas in
diverse disciplines suggests a cultural mechanism in which “different disciplines base the
theories they construct on similar presuppositions because these are the assumptions that
guide the constitution of knowledge in a given episteme” (Hayles, Chaos xi). The
intellectual and social concerns present within a culture at a given time give rise to
similar developments across disciplines; this effect is intensified by the developing global
culture and information explosion that has arisen during Pynchon’s lifetime, and which is
a recurring theme in his novels.
In addition, however, to falling within the general realm of postmodernism, the
indeterminacy of which suggests comparison to contemporary physics theory, Pynchon's
novels are the products of a formidable intellect and perhaps the broadest knowledge of
2
For example, Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence and Vladimir Nabokov knew relatively little about science,
yet the presence of concepts parallel to those of modern physics theory are evident in their novels. Woolf's
The Waves, for example, structurally mimics the wave-particle duality concept of quantum theory.
6
science and mathematics of any contemporary non-genre novelist. His use of scientific
theory is extensive, carefully-designed, and central to the narratives of Gravity's Rainbow
and Mason & Dixon.
Although notoriously little is known of Pynchon’s personal history, the available
facts illustrate an early and persistent oscillation between his interest in science and
literature. Pynchon graduated from high school as salutatorian and was presented with an
award for attaining the highest average in English studies. He then entered Cornell
University with a scholarship and matriculated in Engineering Physics, but later
transferred to the College of Arts and Sciences and graduated with a degree in English
(Winston 258). Pynchon spent only one year as an Engineering Physics student and,
while some critics have assumed his knowledge of mathematics and science was acquired
in the brief course of that formal training, Cornell records suggest that "in his studies of
mathematics, physics, and technology, what really mattered to him he learned largely on
his own" (Schachterle, Pynchon 136).
This fact is significant in light of Pynchon's interest in the dangers of science
when filtered through and co-opted by institutions. In Gravity's Rainbow, Science
inextricably linked to the oppressive power structure. As Kuhn explains in a discussion
of the culture of science, the scientific community has a stake in maintaining the reigning
theoretical paradigm, enforcing its rules and, at least initially, ignoring anomaly.
Pynchon has attained his scientific knowledge in relative isolation, not only from public
life, but, barring a brief stint as an engineering aide at Boeing, from the influence of
educational or corporate entities. He has no officially-sanctioned scientific authority and
7
therefore no responsibility to conform to the dictates of the scientific community. His
power as a commentator on science comes, instead, from his success in blending
scientific and artistic ways of knowing. Pynchon appears to have set up permanent base
camp at the border and seems intent, through calculated raids across the boundaries, on
fostering the sort of intellectual anarchy that he argues is essential to the advancement of
human knowledge.
From the inception of his writing career Pynchon has stood out as a renegade
disciplinary boundary crosser, seemingly equally at ease with differential equations and
Maxwell's demon as he is with Duino Elegies and Jewish mysticism. Among Pynchon’s
early published literary efforts, the short story “Entropy” stands out as an obvious early
attempt to integrate science and literature, and one which Pynchon characterizes as being
sabotaged by a naive reliance on scientific theory alone as the basis for his narrative. As
Pynchon states in Slow Learner "[I]t is simply wrong to begin with a theme, symbol or
other abstract unifying agent, and then try to force characters and events to conform to it"
(12).
In the novels, and particularly in Gravity's Rainbow and Mason & Dixon,
Pynchon makes the relations between science and humans a major thematic focus and
develops the theme through skillful integration. Rather than crushing these narratives
with the weightiness of the scientific principles he incorporates and "short-chang[ing] the
humans in the story," Pynchon's characters here suffer for making the same mistake
Pynchon claims to have made in "Entropy." Their interaction with the world is mediated
and determined by the scientific principles that were designed to enable description of the
8
world. The mandated obsession with categorization and analysis -- the abstract unifying
thrust of Science -- compels them to force the world to conform, thereby advancing the
goals of the power structure and ignoring the alternate ways of knowing that could
disrupt those plans.
In section one of the thesis I outline some of the major developments in physics
the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries and generally establish their relevance
to the novels and their relationship to the paradigm of Science that Pynchon is seeking to
dismantle. Sections three and four of the thesis examine the function of these and other
scientific concepts in Gravity's Rainbow and Mason & Dixon, respectively. Through
examination of a series of shared features in the novels, I illustrate how Pynchon defines
and attacks Science by illustrating its shortcomings and arguing for alternate ways of
knowing. In each section, I explore Pynchon's use of narrative form, scientist and nonscientist characters, and individual concepts from science and math to challenge the
intellectual dominance of Science in Western thought and culture. I further examine
Pynchon’s efforts to break down the rigid boundaries of Science by examining the
permeable boundaries he creates between living and dead, animate and inanimate. In
section four, I discuss the relationship between the two novels and the relevance of this
relationship to Pynchon's ideas about Science and the prospects for attaining the sort of
intellectual and cultural revolution he demands.
9
I. The Revolutions in Physics
Prior to launching into a discussion of the individual novels, it is useful to review
some of the major cosmological and related developments in science and math that are
central to the structure of Pynchon's texts. I will address scientific theories that are
applicable to individual metaphors on a smaller scale in Gravity's Rainbow and Mason &
Dixon within the section devoted to each novel.
For ease of analysis, Alan J. Friedman usefully groups the theories relevant to
Pynchon's novels into three scientific paradigms, to which I have added a fourth,
twentieth-century cosmology. Thus, the major changes I describe below are grouped
generally into the following paradigms: eighteenth-century Newtonian mechanics,
nineteenth-century statistical mechanics, twentieth-century cosmology and twentiethcentury quantum physics. These paradigms are presented for ease of reference and none
should be considered synonymous with the concept of Science that Pynchon seeks to
dismantle, although there is some notable overlap. The tenets of eighteenth-century
mechanics are generally those which define Science and which have remained prevalent
in Western intellectual thought, despite the challenges of twentieth-century cosmology
and quantum physics.
The theories I will describe were generally the result of the contributions of
numerous scientists over a span of time, culminating in breakthroughs that come to be
identified with the accompanying cultural and scientific paradigm shifts. Because we are
primarily interested in the paradigm shifts themselves, and only secondarily interested in
10
the scientific particulars associated with them, in the interest of simplicity I will follow
Friedman in applying these generalized designations to each period.
Eighteenth-century Newtonian mechanics and the worldview associated with it
plays a major role in Gravity's Rainbow and Mason & Dixon and characterizes the
concept of Science that he argues has wrought havoc in Western culture since the
Enlightenment. This "clockwork" view of the universe provided a sense of certainty that
future events could be accurately predicted given adequate information. According to
Newton's laws, "[t]he future motions of any object can be predicted from knowledge of
their initial positions and velocities, and knowledge of the laws of just the few universal
forces" (Friedman, "Einstein" 28). In the paradigm of Newtonian mechanics, complete
human knowledge of God's creation could be eventually attainable through science, as
represented by Newton's simple and elegant series of laws. "The successes of Newton's
theory in astronomy created a wide-spread belief that eventually all aspects of the
universe, even social relations, would be explained by the analogous mechanical modes"
(Friedman, Einstein 31).
The eighteenth century brought continued reliance on Newtonian mechanics, and
if the writing of Locke, Swift, Pope and others discouraged the expectation of absolute
knowledge, further advances in science encouraged the belief that humans had at least a
firm hold on those aspects of the universe that were within the reach of the human mind
(Abrams 1773). The eighteenth century brought both increased codification of general
scientific principles and, as is evident in Mason & Dixon, a tendency to direct the mind
away from those topics whose mysteries seemed beyond the reach of reason (Wolf 61).
11
Pynchon associates these beliefs with Science and the destructive military-industrial
complex of Gravity's Rainbow. Newtonian mechanics set the scene for the cultural
revolution that characterized the Enlightenment and, Pynchon would argue, set humanity
on a course of arrogance and destruction.
Prior to the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the classical Greek view of
Aristotle had held sway for over a thousand years. Aristotle assumed that a state of rest is
natural for all objects, including the Earth, which he believed to reside at rest in the center
of the universe.
Newton, though, building on the work of Galileo, created a series of new laws
that would dramatically alter our perception of the universe. Coming on the heels of the
humbling Copernican revolution, Newton's laws of motion reasserted the ability of
science to explain the workings of the universe. Contrary to Aristotle's belief in a default
state of rest, Newton stated in his first law of motion that an object will continue either at
rest or in uniform motion, unless it is acted on by a net force. Newton's second law
provides a formula (Force = Mass x Acceleration) that allows us to calculate the
acceleration that a given force will cause in an object given the object's mass and the
magnitude and direction of the force. The third law states that for every action there is an
equal and opposite reaction (Friedman, "Science" 75). Newton also stated a law of
universal gravitation, which proclaims that "every body attracts every other body with a
force that is proportional to the mass of each body." In Newtonian mechanics gravity,
like all other forces, is determined by the interaction between bodies (Hawking 16).
12
Although future developments in physics have radically altered the accepted view
of space and time, the rules of motion set forth in Newtonian physics are remarkably
accurate for objects on earth traveling well below the speed of light, and Newtonian
mechanics consequently provides the tools that are used to describe the path of the V-2
rocket in Gravity's Rainbow. The V-2 plays a major role in the novel, as interest in
Slothrop is inspired by his apparent ability to predict the strike locations of the German's
supersonic V-2 rockets. In order to scientifically predict the path of the V-2 rocket, we
apply the equation A=F/M to the rocket at standard intervals throughout its flight; the
shorter the interval, the more accurate the calculation. With the interval defined using the
Greek ∆ (delta) to represent change and t (time), the interval is represented as ∆ t (i.e.,
change in time). As Friedman explains, "Calculus permits us to do a calculation in which,
in effect, ∆ t approaches zero," (Friedman, "Science" 73). This calculus metaphor is used
as a launching point in Gravity's Rainbow for Pynchon's exploration of the number zero,
which I will discuss in section two.
Statistical mechanics is used in Gravity's Rainbow to frame Pynchon’s
development of the statistician Roger Mexico and the pitfalls of interpreting human
experience in terms of probabilities. While Newton's laws of motion precisely describe
the path of objects like the V2 rocket in theory, in practice it is difficult to predict the
exact path or location of a strike due to the impossibility of accurately measuring all
forces acting on the rocket (Friedman, "Science" 78). Thus, statistical mechanics gained
precedence in the 19th century as a way in which to calculate probabilities of each in a
range of possible outcomes. The Poisson Distribution, a mathematical formula devised in
13
1837, is used in Gravity's Rainbow to predict the overall pattern -- although not the
individual location -- of rocket strikes.
The chaotic structure of Gravity's Rainbow and Pynchon's warnings regarding the
destructive potential of Science take their form in part from the laws of thermodynamics
and the concept of entropy. The first law of thermodynamics states generally that energy
cannot be created or destroyed but only transformed, a concept that I will discuss later in
relation to the opening epigraph of Gravity's Rainbow. The second law of
thermodynamics states that "for the universe as a whole, or an isolated part of it,
processes forward in time tend to increase disorder" (Friedman 84). This concept, often
described as entropy, is absent from the formal dictates of Newtonian mechanics. The
latter implies, incorrectly, that it is equally plausible for someone reading a newspaper to
rip it into shreds as it is for the shreds to spontaneously regenerate into a complete sheet
of paper. While the second law of thermodynamics alone does not state that this
spontaneous regeneration is impossible, it indicates that processes forward in time tend
toward disorder, thus making regeneration unlikely.
Pynchon's fascination with the concept of entropy is well documented. He
describes his attraction to entropy as a young man in terms of an adolescent "somber glee
at any idea of mass destruction or decline," suggesting that as he matured his interest
tended more toward the connection between entropy and time, "that human one-way time
we're all stuck with locally here, and which terminates, it is said, in death" (SL 14-15).
These meditations on entropy and time are evident in Gravity's Rainbow -- along with a
good dose of lingering "somber glee."
14
Pynchon also makes use of a well-known failed attempt to challenge the second
law of thermodynamics in the sorting demon theorized by James Clerk Maxwell in 1871.
In a thought experiment, Maxwell invented a hypothetical sorting demon that he argued
would be capable of violating the principle in the second law of thermodynamics that
states that any inequality of temperature or pressure cannot be created without the
expenditure of work. Maxwell suggested a vessel divided into two sections, A and B, by
a partition in which there is a small hole. A being then opens and closes the hole, sorting
the faster molecules into section A and the slower molecules into section B. This would
raise the temperature in Section A, supposedly without exerting energy. The sorting
demon hypothesis was later refuted on the basis that the act of opening and closing "the
door" requires the use of energy (Mangel 88). However, this image plays a large role in
The Crying of Lot 49 and Pynchon uses it in several instances in Gravity's Rainbow.
In Gravity's Rainbow Pynchon explores the tension between Newtonian
mechanism and twentieth-century cosmology and quantum physics, making use of
concepts drawn from the latter two to illustrate the failings of Science and to warn of
potential consequences. Pynchon attacks Science through creation of a
paranoia/antiparanoia dichotomy that mimics the relationship between Newtonian
mechanics and Quantum physics, as well as the ongoing debate over the question of
whether or not indetermism is an inherent characteristic of the universe. Although
Pynchon's characters -- and his readers -- are caught in a web of indeterminacy, they
continue to slalom through events as they transpire, ill-equipped because they use the
teachings of Science as their guide. Pynchon incorporates the concept of a black hole,
15
which I will discuss below, as a framing device in Gravity's Rainbow to suggest that
Science has led the Western world to a precipice and left it teetering between destruction
and potential salvation. Many of these concepts and other more specific theories related
to twentieth-century physics and cosmology contained in Gravity's Rainbow followed the
changes in our understanding of space and time brought about by Albert Einstein's
theories of relativity.
In Newtonian mechanics, "the physical world was considered to be composed of
isolated objects separated from one another in an empty space that was rigid and
unchanging, with a universal 'now' pervading all space at any given moment" (Hayles,
"Cosmic" 42). In the late nineteenth century, Maxwell's theories of electricity and
magnetism yielded a description of light as an electromagnetic wave that travels at a
constant speed through a substance called the ether, which was supposed to be present
everywhere, "even in 'empty' space". The hypothesis of the ether was necessitated
because, if light was a wave, it needed a medium. Were the ether theory accurate,
"[d]ifferent observers, moving relative to the ether, would see light coming toward them
at different speeds, but light's speed relative to the ether would remain fixed" (Hawking
19).
However, this supposition was called into question when the Michelson-Morley
experiment found the speed of light to remain constant under circumstances in which -were the ether theory accurate -- it should have appeared to differ (Taylor 14). Newton's
laws required "inertial" reference frames of measurement -- reference frames in which the
velocity (speed and direction) remained constant during observation. Observers in two
16
different inertial reference frames, then, would be expected to measure different speeds of
light. According to this long-held law of relativity, formulated by Galileo,
"[M]easurements may be relative, but the laws of physics cannot be relative. They must
be exactly the same for all inertial reference frames" (Friedman, "Einstein" 47).
Einstein dismissed the ether concept by disposing of the assumption of universal
time in his 1905 paper presenting the Special Theory of Relativity. Einstein assumed,
first, that the laws of physics should be the same for all inertial reference frames.
Second, he asserted that the speed of light will be observed to be the same for any inertial
reference frame (Hawking 20). The most startling implication of Einstein's equations is
that if the speed of light is constant, both space and time must be relative to the reference
frame.
Einstein altered our ideas of space and time as two distinct concepts by combining
the two into a space-time continuum, a system of three coordinates of space and one of
time by which physical objects can be located. Prior to Einstein's 1915 General Theory
of Relativity, space and time were conceived as a "fixed arena in which events took
place, but which was not affected by what happened in it." In the General Theory, space
and time become dynamic quantities. "[W]hen a body moves, or a force acts, it affects
the curvature of space and time -- and in turn the structure of space-time affects the way
in which bodies move and forces act" (Hawking 33). Published ten years after the
Special Theory, the General Theory states that the laws of physics must hold for both
inertial reference frames and reference frames moving with a changing velocity.
17
While Einstein's theories of relativity are not specifically referenced in Pynchon's
novels, the twentieth century cosmology that arose from it is. Through a combination of
observation and the efforts of scientists revisiting Einstein's General Theory of Relativity,
it was postulated in the 1920s that the universe, rather than being static, as had been
assumed, is in fact expanding. "[W]hile Einstein and other physicists were looking for
ways of avoiding general relativity's prediction of a nonstatic universe," Alexander
Friedmann attempted to explain it and his hypotheses about the universe spawned the Big
Bang theory (Hawking 40). Friedmann suggested that the distance between neighboring
galaxies was, at one time, zero. According to Friedmann, prior to the Big Bang, the
universe was infinitely dense and space-time infinitely curved, contained within a
singularity, now called a Friedmann point, at which the known laws of physics cease to
apply. According to the big bang theory, at the beginning of time, the universe began
expanding from this hypothetical center (Hawking 46).
Although the issue is still being debated, according to Friedmann, at some point in
the future, the gravitational attraction between the bodies in the universe will eventually
surpass the force of expansion, causing the universe to recollapse. "The rush inward
toward the Center would then end in another incredibly dense mass, which would again
explode, expelling matter outward. The universe would thus act like a rubber band being
stretched and then released" (Hayles, Cosmic 193). A similar collapsing phenomenon is
thought to occur on a smaller scale when a large star exhausts its fuel source: the star
collapses in on itself, forming what is known as a black hole, a concept that plays a
18
structural and thematic role in Gravity's Rainbow and which I discuss in detail in chapter
two.
Another revolution of modern physics is the uncertainty principle. Uncertainty in
statistical mechanics results from a practical human inability to attain the necessary data,
thereby creating the need to approximate. In contrast, developments in quantum physics
in the twentieth century have led many to conclude that uncertainty is an inherent
characteristic of the universe. It's not that we don't know -- it's that we can't know.
Quantum theory diverged even further from the Newtonian worldview,
abandoning the idea that future events could -- given complete data -- be predicted and
instead depicting a universe that could only be approximated with probabilities.
Research into the properties of light began to generate conflicting results in the early
twentieth century, with some results indicating that light is composed of particles, and
others showing light as composed of waves. Einstein's explanation of the photo-electric
ffect in 1905 suggested that light is composed of particles; in his theories of
relativity, though, light was assumed to be a wave (Friedman, Einstein 115). Several
scientists determined independently that both theories appear to be correct. This concept
is summarized in Niels Bohr's 1927 "Principle of Complementarity," which suggests that
"[t]he wave-like and particle-like pictures of light should be seen as complements to each
other, both required for achieving the full description of the entity called light" (118).
Werner Heisenberg's 1927 "Uncertainty Principle" further called into question our
ability to pin down elements of the sub-atomic universe. Heisenberg set forth several sets
of conjugate pairs of knowledge related to a given particle, including position and
19
momentum and energy and time, and stated that only one element of each pair can be
determined at a time. In other words, if we are able to determine the exact position of a
particle, the act of measuring the position automatically restricts our ability to measure its
momentum. Thus, the observer becomes inextricably linked with that which is being
observed. "The fuzziness in knowledge is unavoidable because it is a fuzziness inherent
in the universe described by these new laws of physics" (Friedman, Einstein 119).
The implications of quantum physics have been debated since its inception, with
some scientists coming out in favor of indeterminacy and others, including Einstein,
arguing in favor of a unified -- but as of yet undefined -- theory that would explain the
uncertainties and preserve the possibility of attaining complete knowledge (Friedman,
Einstein 122). A similar dichotomy between paranoia and anti-paranoia is evident in
Pynchon's novels.
While twentieth-century cosmology and quantum physics called into question
assumptions about causality and the ability of science to attain complete knowledge,
these challenges have not been incorporated into the worldview of Science as presented
by Pynchon in Gravity's Rainbow, perhaps because they suggest that the scientific
method may be incapable of leading us to complete knowledge. Thus, Pynchon's critique
of the limitations of Science is primarily a critique of the Enlightenment worldview,
within which he argues Western culture is still entrenched. Although Pynchon's
symbolically proposed alternatives have some characteristics in common with twentiethcentury cosmology and quantum physics, the primary similarity between Pynchon's
alternatives and modern science lies in the failure of Science to explain either.
20
In describing and critiquing Science, Pynchon appropriates the concepts and
speculates about the consequences of ideas from these four scientific paradigms in
Gravity's Rainbow and Mason & Dixon, selecting theories with suspiciously-consistent
characteristics -- and often prompting frustratingly conflicting conclusions. In sections
three and four I examine how Pynchon incorporates these and other concepts from
science and math in Gravity's Rainbow and Mason & Dixon, respectively, to explore the
boundaries of scientific ways of knowing and a deep ambivalence about the scientific
enterprise.
21
II. Gravity’s Rainbow
In Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon sets the stakes of Scientific revolution high,
arguing that the Western world is at a crossroads that offers the prospect of either
annhilation or redemption through the rejection of Science.
The central narrative in Gravity’s Rainbow and that with which all other plots
intersect, is the scientific interest surrounding U.S. Army Lieutenant Tyrone Slothrop,
whose sexual conquests in London appear to correspond exactly to a map illustrating the
impact sites of the German’s V-2 rocket bombs in World War II. Suspecting that the
correspondence is related to an alleged experiment in conditioning to which infant
Slothrop was subjected by chemist Laszlo Jamf, a bizarre collection of scientists headed
up by Dr. Edward Pointsman initially lead, then lose, Slothrop in a comical and paranoid
quest for answers about his past and a search for the famed Rocket 00000 played out on
the European continent. Intersecting plots follow the exploits of Pointsman and his
competing team of scientists and mystics; German rocket engineer Franz Pokler and his
wife Leni; the herero Enzian and his German half-brother Tchitcherine; and the trio of
Dutch double agent Katje Borgesius, German soldier Gottfried, and Major Weissman
(aka Blicero), whose sadomasochistic staging of Hansel and Gretel leads to the novel’s
surreal final launching of the elusive Rocket 00000.
Although Gravity's Rainbow touches on elements of all of the scientific
paradigms outlined in the previous chapter, its narrative structure shares characteristics
with other postmodern novels that suggest parallels between the changes in world view
22
associated with quantum physics and changes in narrative form. The narrative of
Gravity's Rainbow, while generally linear, is packed with unannounced prolepses and
analepses, which themselves often contain sudden jumps to a tenuously related time and
place and a story that may or may not seem related to anything previously encountered in
the novel. The characters are plagued by uncertainty, the explanations are fuzzy and
many of the questions raised are left unresolved.
These distinctly postmodern characteristics of the narrative, while in accordance
with the ideas of twentieth-century quantum physics, create a serious challenge for the
cause-and-effect seeking characters depicted within the novel. In fact, the Science that
Pynchon challenges in Gravity's Rainbow is so pervasive in Western culture that it
reinforces expectations of causality in the very process of reading. Although the concept
of causality, of course, predates the rise of Science, Pynchon makes use of expectations
of causality in reading to challenge Science's own faith in strict causality. In the face of
such narrative chaos, the reader seeks to create meaning by attempting to establish causal
relations between the events ... only to be mocked by the narrator, who at one point
acknowledges, begrudgingly, "You will want cause and effect. All right." (GR 663). The
reader is forced into the same dilemma that torments Pynchon's characters, who,
suspecting a master plot, but being unable to either confirm or deny the existence of one,
are left to struggle with their own paranoia. Of course, they are only paranoid if there is
no plot. Ultimately, Pynchon makes it impossible for the reader to achieve complete
understanding of the novel through a reliance on expectations of causality, thereby
highlighting the limitations of Science.
23
Pynchon's treatment of science and mathematics in Gravity's Rainbow is carefully
designed to challenge Science by establishing realms of human experience to which it
does not apply and by presenting alternatives to the symbolic order of the scientific
method. In order to accomplish this, Pynchon identifies the scientific method with
rigidity, causality and binary oppositions and then presents a symbolic alternative to it
with scientific concepts that are concerned with the unification or elimination of binary
oppositions and boundary crossing.
Pynchon links Science to the military-industrial complex that has created and
profited from the horrors of World War II and depicts its adherents as naive followers
who, believing the promises of the Enlightenment, blindly follow where Science leads
them, without regard for the human and spiritual consequences of the technology it
creates.
The narrative shape of Gravity's Rainbow is indicative of Pynchon's revolutionary
intent. Although the narrative in Gravity's Rainbow seems initially chaotic, most critics
are in agreement that it takes the form of a geometric shape. However, critics are in
disagreement over whether the dominant image is a parabola or a circle. These two
images are repeatedly juxtaposed and intermingled in both the novel’s narrative form and
throughout the text. The parabola, which matches the trajectory of the V-2 rocket, is
most often associated in the novel with doom and destruction. "Katje has understood the
great airless arc as a clear allusion to certain secret lusts that drive the planet and herself,
and Those who use her--over its peak and down, plunging, burning, toward a terminal
24
orgasm" (GR 223). The entrance to the Mittlewerke is shaped like a parabola, and the
actual path of the V-2 rocket is referred to several times as an ellipse of uncertainty.
"Its counterpart," argues Steven Weisenburger, "is the circular mandala, a symbol
of opposites held in delicate equipoise" (10). Weisenburger argues that the chronology of
the novel suggests a carefully devised circular design (9). The novel opens with a
description of the V2 missile strike in September 1944 and ends -- barring the brief
description of the Orpheus Theater in 1970 -- in September 1945 (Tololyan 32). But
Molly Hite and others contend that the parabolic path of the rocket "controls and
structures the novel" (98). The action of the novel begins with the sentence, “A
screaming comes across the sky,” a flashback that recalls the first supersonic V2 missile
launched on London in September of 1944. The novel ends with the final firing of
Rocket 00000, which, once it begins to fall, “does not fall into the same world that fired
it, and it is no longer a specific V-2 weapon with a young German soldier aboard; it is
now the Rocket ...” (Fowler 89).
Thus, according to Weisenburger and others, the basic narrative structure adheres
to the cyclical form of the calendar year -- suggesting a circular chronology; the opening
and closing V2 images give the impression of a giant parabola arching over the text.
Combined, these two images are suggestive of a conical shape. The circle and the
parabola, known as conic curves in mathematics, are mathematical curves that are
generated by the intersection of a plane with a cone. As illustrated in Figure 1, the base
of the cone is a circle, also generated when a plane intersects parallel to the base. A plane
intersecting parallel to the edge of the cone creates a parabola.
25
This conical shape to the novel, which to my knowledge has not been suggested
previously, corresponds roughly to the projected shape of a black hole, as illustrated in
Figure 2. A few critics have noted the presence of potential references to black holes
within the text. Lawrence Kappel's 1980 essay suggested black holes as a trope within
the novel, stating "The Zone is inside a black hole in historical and political space, a
Bermuda triangle, through an exit door from 'reality'" (234). The same year, T.S.
Tillotson published an enthusiastic one and a half page article in "Pynchon Notes"
suggesting a relation of gravitational entropy and black holes to Gravity's Rainbow but
provided few specifics and did not publish, as intended, a more substantial follow-up
article.
The most revealing treatment of the subject to date comes from N. Katherine
Hayles, who, in the context of a discussion about Pynchon's treatment of singularities -"points in mathematical functions where the derivative, or rate of change, of the function
becomes discontinuous" -- notes the presence of several possible references to black
holes in Gravity's Rainbow (Cosmic 190).
One particularly interesting type of singularity, akin to the one from which the
universe is postulated to have exploded, black holes are believed to be created when stars
run out of the nuclear fuels that enable them to avoid collapsing in on themselves by
balancing their gravitational attraction against the heat from nuclear reactions. When
stars of a sufficient mass begin to collapse they form black holes. When one of these
collapsing stars has "shrunk to a certain critical radius, the gravitational field at the
surface becomes so strong that ... light can no longer escape" (Hawking 87). The
26
boundary at which the gravitational field makes it impossible for anything to escape is
called the event horizon, the magnitude of which is calculated by the Schwartzchild
radius, named after German physicist Karl Schwartzchild, who postulated black holes
based on one solution of a set of equations created by Einstein shortly after his General
Theory of Relativity3.
"In Pynchon's text, 'Schwartzchild' is the Jamf code name for infant Slothrop,"
notes Hayles (194). Weisenburger points out that in fact Slothrop's code name is
Schwartzknabe and calls the connection "tenuous: wholly reliant upon the reader's (not
Pynchon's) translation" (193). While I concur that the Schwartzchild translation is not
the only possibility, placing the responsibility for translation with the reader, and giving
just enough information to suggest -- but never verify -- the black hole theory, it seems in
keeping with Pynchon's paranoia-creating narrative style.
The black hole is one of a number of scientific concepts in Gravity's Rainbow
concerned with boundaries. The image fits perfectly with Pynchon's symbolic system, as
the difference between annihilation and survival depends upon a given threshold. The
presence of the image of the V2 rocket arching over the text suggests that the technology
that man has created with Science is leading humankind dangerously close to its own
destruction.
A much quoted passage from the beginning of the novel describing the evacuation
of London contains language that has been taken as descriptive of the whole and that is
similarly descriptive of the formation of a black hole: "No, this is not a disentanglement
from, but a progressive knotting into." The narrator describes the scene: "There are no
3
The term "black hole," however, was not coined until 1968.
27
lights inside the cars. No light anywhere." And again: they "try to bring events to
Absolute zero ... and it is poorer the deeper they go ... ruinous secret cities of poor, places
whose names he has never heard ... the walls break down, the roofs get fewer and so do
the chances for light" (GR 3). Within a black hole, all matter collapses to zero volume
and infinite density and light is unable to escape.
If Pynchon is incorporating black hole imagery here, he is clearly doing so with a
great deal of creative license, but that, again, is characteristic of his incorporation of
scientific concepts. Further evidence of the black hole concept comes near the beginning
of Part 4: The Counterforce. It is generally agreed upon that there is a final scene with
Slothrop, and then he begins to scatter, to fragment and become invisible. Black hole
imagery is incorporated here as well, as Pynchon hones in on symbolic singularities:
"The sand-colored churchtops rear up on Slothrop's horizons, apses out to four sides like
rocket fins guiding the streamlined spires ... at last, lying one afternoon spread-eagled at
his ease in the sun ... he becomes a cross himself, a living intersection" (GR 625).
Here, the churchtops, which "rear up" on Slothrop's (plural) horizons are
reminiscent of both the V2 rocket and the black hole singularity, as mimicked by the
"streamlined spires." Later, Slothrop sees a rainbow, "a stout rainbow cock driven down
out of the pubic clouds in to Earth, green wet valleyed Earth, and his chest fills and he
stands crying, not a thing in his head, just feeling natural" (GR 626).
Tillotson notes "Every black hole is surrounded by a literally invisible rainbow
shell at the Schwartzchild radius (where r = 2M). It must be more than mere coincidence
(heh, heh) that the title of Gravity's Rainbow reads as a symbol for this light-shrouded
28
null horizon of our universal destiny, and holds the promise of illumination to be gained
through some steps taken (perhaps even unknowingly) across unseen thresholds of no
return" (24).
Schwartzchild's theory -- and others corresponding to the years just prior to the
publication of Gravity's Rainbow -- contained a second solution to Einstein's equations
and suggests the existence of white holes, the properties of which are opposite to those of
black holes: they radiate matter and energy outward (see Figure 3). Schwartzchild's
geometry consists of a black hole, a white hole and "two universes connected at their
horizons by a wormhole" (Hamilton). Thus, "whereas the black hole is a powerful
metaphor for the absolute annihilation of no Return, the white hole promises rebirth"
(Hayles 195).
Slothrop's disintegration and disappearance from the novel can be read as both
cautionary tale and redemption. As Hawking explains, an observer present on the surface
of a star or other object as it is collapsing to form a black hole would fragment either
before or after formation of the event horizon. Gravitational forces "would stretch [an
observer] out like spaghetti or tear him apart" (88). Slothrop begins to fragment just after
the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, suggesting obliteration as a possible fate
for humanity following along in the path set out for it by Science and the transnational
powers, who are able to use technology to advance Their agenda. At the same time,
though, Slothrop's own experience of scattering paradoxically seems like a welcome
release, as evidenced by his feeling of naturalness and by the church and mandala
29
imagery. Slothrop alone is able to transcend the scientific-military-industrial complex
that is the basis of the novel's They-system.
Pynchon's primary attack on Science, though, is carried out in a much more
straightforward fashion as Pynchon tests the boundaries and limitations of several of the
scientific paradigms outlined in chapter two. He does so through a variety of nonscientist and scientist characters who all labor under oppressive forces of Science.
The most unlikable among them, Edward W. A. Pointsman, is the mastermind
behind the schemes to uncover the mechanism that allegedly enables Slothrop to predict
the locations of the V-2 strikes. Pointsman, a dedicated Pavlovian, runs the show at
PISCES -- Psychological Intelligence Schemes for Expediting Surrender -- constantly
strategizing ways to distract Brigadier Pudding from affairs at The White Visitation in
order to maintain control of operations there.
Pointsman is dedicated to and obsessed with cause and effect, a belief system that
corresponds to Newtonian mechanics as outlined in the previous chapter and which is one
of the central tenets of Science. Pointsman "is one of seven owners of The Book, and if
you ask Mr. Pointsman what Book, you'll only get smirked at" (GR 47). These seven
rotate the Book, which goes unnamed, on a weekly basis. The mysterious Book, which
functions as their bible, is an Ivan Petrovich Pavlov text on conditioned reflexes, a
practice that Pavlov illustrated using dogs ... and which Pointsman, following in the
footsteps of Laszlo Jamf, wishes to test on humans (Fowler 102, Weisenburger 37).
Pointsman is entirely unwilling to traverse any ideological boundaries, being
completely devoted to cause and effect, and confident in man's ability to uncover the
30
secrets of the clockwork universe. And while, one by one, the other co-owners of the
Book are killed in the war and pass over the boundary between the living and the dead,
Pointsman remains, stubborn and determined, with his career in ruins as the result of the
accidental castration of Major Marvy.
Franz Pokler, like Pointsman, is a "cause-and-effect" man (GR 159). Perhaps the
most clueless of Pynchon's scientist pawns of various shadowy They-systems, Pokler is
incapable of understanding Leni's metaphorical language, her reliance on astrology, or
her politics. After Leni leaves him, Pokler remains a dutiful, though increasingly
disgruntled, rocket engineer due to the annual visits with "Ilse" that Weissman arranges.
When Pokler is transferred to the Mittelwerke in Nordhausen, he realizes that the Dora
camp is just on the other side of the wall, and yet he continues his labors, despite the
suspicion that Ilse could be enduring torture so nearby. After getting confirmation from
her "[h]e tried, and kept trying, to get into the Dora camp and find Ilse ... [T]he SS guards
each time were courteous, understanding, impossible to get past" (GR 430).
As the camp was on the eve of liberation, Pokler was finally able to cross through
the gates, to find a scene of horror. "All his vacuums, his labyrinths, had been on the
other side of this. While he lived, and drew marks on paper, this invisible kingdom had
kept on, in the darkness outside ... all this time ... Pokler vomited" (GR 433). Pokler's
mechanical practice of his science, his complacency and his reliance on the established
laws of Science prevented him from really acknowledging what was on the other side of
the walls he worked within -- until it was too late.
31
Pynchon's depiction of the holocaust in these terms suggests the evils of relying
on cold and abstract belief systems regarding race to justify human slavery, oppression
and genocide. Pynchon associates the machinistic nature of the holocaust with Science
and is unforgiving of scientist characters like Pokler who fail to acknowledge the realities
of the enterprise they are participating in.
Roger Mexico, PISCES statistician, serves as a likeable foil to Pointsman and
Pokler. "[I]n the domain of zero to one, not-something to something, Pointsman can only
possess the zero and the one. He cannot, like Mexico, survive anyplace in between"
(Gravity's 55). Mexico exists in the space between -- in statistics and probabilities.
Although he works among psychics, telekinetics and others with mysterious powers, he
relies on only the tools of statistics in acquiring knowledge and views the methods of his
mystic peers as suspect. "Never had a prophetic dream, never sent or got a telepathic
message, never touched the Other World directly. If anything's there, it will show in the
experimental data, won't it, in the numbers" (GR 40).
Mexico, though as trapped in his scientific paradigm as Pointsman is in his, seems
sometimes to throw a glance towards the boundaries. "It's not my forte, of course,"
Mexico tells Pointsman, "but there's a feeling about that cause-and-effect may have been
taken as far as it will go. That for science to carry on at all, it must look for a less
narrow, a less ... sterile set of assumptions. The next great breakthrough may come when
we have the courage to junk cause-and-effect entirely, and strike off at some other angle"
(GR 89).
32
Mexico might have been redeemed by his love for Jessica, which enables him to
cross over into the unknown realm of human emotions, in which mathematics is no guide.
In the midst of a long passage about Mexico's intense love for Jessica, the narrator notes,
"The time Roger and Jessica have spent together, totaled up, still only comes to hours.
And all their spoken words to less than one average SHAEF memorandum. And there is
no way, first time in his career, that the statistician can make these figures mean
anything" (GR 121). Still, from early in the novel, Mexico is predicting the end of the
relationship, attempting to calculate the probabilities of her leaving him for the more
predictable Beaver. Such are the pitfalls of applying the tenets of statistical mechanics to
the social realm. Although Mexico succeeds in crossing the Force-Counterforce
boundary and joining the resistance, that effort is ultimately ineffective and Mexico's
character is left as a foil to binarism and a symbolic representation of the perils of
existing in the space between the zero and the one ... he is unable to escape nor fully to
commit; he is able to move partway to redemption and then no further.
In this novel in which technology -- the product of faith in Science -- serves as
the mechanism that ushers the war's victims through death to a shadowy afterlife,
Pynchon's mediums channel spirits of the dead that seem keen, in their moments of
connection with the world of the living, to characterize the rationality and causal beliefs
of Science as a destructive construct that serves Their purposes.
Walter Rathenau, assassinated German foreign minister and himself a likely
candidate for membership in Their ranks, is channeled by Leni Pokler's lover Peter
Sachsa (who, in turn, serves as the control in Caroll Eventyr's channeling of Roland
33
Feldspath). "Rathenau was prophet and architect of the cartelized state" (GR 164).
Rathenau's connections to IG Farben have inspired the prewar Nazi elect to attempt a
séance through which to question him and prior to which "[a] gentle sorting out process is
under way. Reasons of security. Only certain guests are allowed to go on into Peter's
sitting room. The preterite stay outside, gossiping, showing their gums out of tension,
moving their hands..." (GR 163).
Rathenau's vision for Germany after World War I was for "a rational structure in
which business would be the true, the rightful authority" (GR 165). As Rathenau is
channeled through Sachsa, he hints at alternate ways of knowing that, he suspects, will be
difficult for the living to comprehend: "All talk of cause and effect is secular history, and
secular history is a diversionary tactic. Useful to you, gentlemen, but no longer to us
here. If you want the truth -- I know I presume -- you must look into the technology of
these matters. Even into the hearts of certain molecules ... " (GR 167).
Rathenau instructs his listeners to consider, what is the nature of synthesis? And
what is the nature of control" "You think you know, you cling to your beliefs. But
sooner or later you will have to let them go ..." (GR 167).
Earlier, Rathenau attempts to direct his listeners where to look for answers
through a discussion of organic chemistry -- and particularly the inception of the dye and
pharmaceutical industries, including the production of Oneirine (Weisenburger 95).
"Tyrian purple, alizarin and indigo, other coal-tar dyes are here, but the important one is
mauve." Rathenau continues to explain how the creation of mauve, the first synthetic
dye, came about through the synthesis of coal tar ... previously thought to be a useless
34
waste material. The significant aspect of the explanation is that coal-tar exists at the
boundary between two other materials. "Consider coal and steel. There is a place where
they meet. The interface between coal and steel is coal-tar ... We passed over the coaltars. A thousand different molecules waited in the preterite dung. This is the sign of
revealing. Of unfolding" (GR 166).
The séance attended by Roger Mexico and Jessica, at which Caroll Eventyr, via
Sachsa, channels Roland Feldspath, carries a similar message. Feldspath speaks of a
mystical wind that brings unity ... and states that, while living, he was unable to feel it but
felt only secular wind. Speaking of alterations in market forces, he states: "It's control.
All these things arise from one difficulty: control ... [T]he illusion of control. That A
could do B. But that was false. Completely. No one can do. Things only happen, A and
B are unreal, are names for parts that ought to be inseparable" (GR 30).
Pynchon uses these contacts with the afterlife to challenge the authority of
Science and to juxtapose it with an alternative that he associates with a mystical wind,
unity and the interface between opposites. In using the concepts from science and math I
discuss below, Pynchon creates a symbolic system that illustrates the weakness or
destructive nature of science and then seeks to replace it with a suggested, though
abstract, alternative.
Pynchon identifies binarism and the concept of opposites with Science and makes
these ideas negative within the symbolism of the text. During the séance that Jessica and
Mexico attend, Jessica inquires about Milton Gloaming's language investigations.
Gloaming, relying on George Kingsley Zipf's Principle of Least Effort, as described in
35
his 1935 book The Psycho-Biology of Language, makes notes of the words spoken during
séances and other instances of automatic texts, records their frequency, and then graphs
them to determine if there is any variation from "normal" speech. As Gloaming attempts
to explain to Jessica, he graphs the information, "plotting the frequency of word P sub N
against its rank-order n on logarithmic axes" (GR 32). Or, as Zipf describes it, Gloaming
indicates "on the abscissa of a double logarithmic chart the number of the word in the
series and on the ordinate its frequency" (Zipf 44). Zipf argues that in normal speech the
result will be a straight line.
"[H]owever, we've data that suggests the curves for certain -- conditions, well,
they're actually quite different -- schizophrenics for example tend to run a bit flatter in the
upper part then progressively steeper -- a sort of bow shape," Gloaming tells Jessica (GR
32).
The bow-shape suggested by the abnormal speech patterns of the schizophrenic,
of course, mimics the flight path of the V-2 rocket. Pynchon, though, pushes further.
Gloaming, suggests that the medium they've been observing is a "classical paranoiac,"
noting, upon Jessica's inquiry, that he relies heavily on words that mean "against" and
"opposite." The most frequent word, reports Gloaming, is "death" (GR 32).
The meaning of words is not taken into account in Jamf's Principle -- only their
frequency and use. Yet Pynchon associates ideas of opposition with the diseased state of
the paranoiac.
Mexico uses the Poisson distribution mentioned in section one to predict the
pattern of the V2 rocket strikes in London. The distribution allows him to determine "for
36
a number of total hits arbitrarily chosen, how many squares will get none, how many one,
two, three, and so on" (GR 55). While Mexico's predictions are accurate -- the bombs do
fall into a perfect Poisson distribution, the frustrating limitation of the method is that,
while the distribution can determine how many squares will get at least one bomb, it
provides no way to predict which ones, and no way to predict when the bombs will fall.
As Jessica laments, "Why is your equation only for angels, Roger? Why can't we
do something, down here? Couldn't there be an equation for us too, something to help us
find a safer place?" (GR 54).
Pynchon incorporates the world of Pavlov into the text via Pointsman. Pavlov's
work was particularly concerned with ideas of opposition: pleasure and pain, light and
dark, dominance and submission (all topics that hold a fascination for Pynchon as well).
Pavlov -- and Pointsman after him -- not only explored the brain functions associated
with these opposites, but was particularly interested in subverting them. "[W]hen,
somehow -- starve them, traumatize, shock, castrate them, send them over into one of the
transmarginal phases, past borders of their waking selves, past "equivalent" and
"paradoxical phases" ... you weaken this idea of the opposite, and here all at once is the
paranoid patient who would be master, yet now feels himself a slave" (GR 48).
Pointsman proposes a correlation between this mechanism and Slothrop's ability
to anticipate the V-2 rockets ... as if the boundary that separates cause and effect has been
broken down, become passable. Pointsman, in a conversation with Kevin Spectro,
suggests that some element of the war environment automatically sends Slothrop
"transmarginal," triggering a reflex that allows him to feel the V-2 bombs coming days in
37
advance (GR 49). Although this is never proven to be the case, it is of interest that the
phenomenon that gives Slothrop an ability akin to magic is hypothesized to be associated
with boundary crossing. To Pointsman, the possibility is a frightening sign of disease;
but within the symbolic system of the novel, going transmarginal is one method of
combatting Science.
Pynchon incorporates entropy into the novel, as in his short story "Entropy," in
the obvious increase in disorder as the novel progresses and in individual references to
the process. But he also makes reference to challenges to the Second Law of
Thermodynamics, suggesting that the German chemist Justus Freiherr von Liebig was
acting as a sorting demon similar to that hypothesized by Maxwell when he encouraged
Kekulé, who created the plastics that the military-industrial complex hold so dear, to
switch his major to chemistry. In doing so, the narrator proposes, Liebeg was "helping to
concentrate energy into one favored room of the creation at the expense of everything
else" (GR 411). Within the symbolic order of the text, this act of sorting is negative
because it contributes to the success of the military-industrial complex.
The number zero serves as a lightning rod in Gravity's Rainbow for discussion of
Science and its alternatives and the prospects for annhilation or salvation, as Pynchon
makes repeated reference to the number zero and the idea of moving beyond the zero.
There are a plethora of ideas linked to the number, among them negative associations
with Science and positive associations with alternatives to it. It is linked with a possible
explanation for Slothrop's ability to predict rocket strikes, which is suspected to be
associated with the response conditioned in him as an infant by Laszlo Jamf. Jamf,
38
presumably, followed tradition and deconditioned him as well. But, as the narrator states,
quoting Pavlov, "Not only must we speak of partial or of complete extinction of a
conditioned reflex, but we must also realize that extinction can proceed beyond the point
of reducing a reflex to zero. We cannot therefore judge the degree of extinction only by
the magnitude of the reflex or its absence, since there can still be a silent extinction
beyond the zero" (GR 85).
Zero is also associated with the rocket, in calculating both its projected path and
the point of its projected landing: "Ascending, programmed in a ritual of love ... at
Brennschluss it is done -- the Rocket's purely feminine counter part, the zero point at the
center of its target, has submitted." Further, the rocket and similar destructive
technology, is associated with the threshold at which man's love affair with science will
become destructive (GR 223).
Leni attempts to appropriate the number zero to explain to Pokler one of her nonscientific ways of knowing, making use of calculus as a metaphor for the excitement and
sense of possibility she feels at street demonstrations: "She even tried, from what little
calculus she'd picked up, to explain it to Franz as ∆t approaching zero, eternally
approaching, the slices of time growing thinner and thinner, a succession of rooms each
with walls more silver, transparent, as the pure light of the zero comes nearer ..." (GR
159). Leni tries, and fails, to explain to Pokler in his own terms the infinite possibilities
of the world beyond Science.
In a discussion between Ombindi, the lead proponent of tribal suicide for the
Hereros, and Enzian, the narrator draws parallels between Enzian's strategy and that of
39
The Empty Ones. Enzian seeks to bring his people to a state of mystical union: "The
people will find the Center again, the Center without time, the journey without hysteresis,
where every departure is a return to the same place, the only place" (GR 319). The
strategy of The Empty Ones is to commit tribal suicide simply through failing to
reproduce, thereby determining the fate of the Zone-Hereros in bed, in a sexualized sort
of suicide that the pair discuss in detail. The zero here is linked to the mystical unity of
the Center: "The Eternal Center can easily be seen as The Final Zero. Names and
methods vary, but the movement toward stillness is the same" (GR 319).
Finally, as I illustrated above, zero is also associated with black holes in terms of
their volume and in the imagery of the opening scene, which describes the evacuation of
London in imagery that is suspiciously descriptive of the black hole phenomenon. This
provides a unifying image for the other destructive and redemptive associations with the
number.
Perhaps the most iconic mathematical concept within the text is the singularity.
Pynchon uses singularities as a symbol of both the limitations of Science and of the
exhilarating, formally undefinable, possibilites that exist outside of it. Pynchon makes
references to the Friedmann point, "the hypothetical center from which the universe
exploded" (Hayles, Cosmic 190), which, like the singularity at the center of a black hole,
has zero volume and infinite density. The narrator drools over the "singular point at the
top of a lady's stocking," suggesting at this point, "there is a cosmology: of nodes and
cusps and points of oscillation, mathematical kisses ... singularities! Consider cathedral
spires, holy minarets ... mountain peaks rising sharply to heaven ... even, according to the
40
Russian mathematician Friedmann, the infinitely dense point from which the present
Universe expanded." The narrator points out, too, that the point at the very top of the
rocket, "where the fuse is," is a singularity as well, suggesting that "the change from point
to no-point" in each of these cases inspires wonder -- or perhaps fear. "Do all these
points imply, like the Rocket's an annihilation?" (GR 396).
The narrator suggests that the Polish undertaker who rescues Thanatz in his boat
would gain an understanding of cataclysm if he were to succeed in getting struck by
lightning. "[T]he ones who do get hit [by lightning] experience a singular point, a
discontinuity in the curve of life -- do you know what the time rate of change is at a cusp?
Infinity, that's what! A-and right across the point, it's minus infinity! How's that for
sudden change, eh?" (GR 664).
At a singularity, as ∆x moves to zero, ∆y goes to infinity. Thus, the rate of
change at a singularity that differential calculus attempts to express goes to infinity. As
Hayles explains, "The differential dy/dx, is defined as the limit, as ∆x approaches zero, of
∆y/∆x. At the singularity, this limit must be formally expressed as infinity because it
fails to converge, becoming larger and larger as the cusp is approached." Pynchon
latches on to this concept because it serves both as symbolic boundary and because "the
singularity ... represents a point where the behavior of the function ceases to be
mathematically expressible, except in a purely formal way" (Hayles 191).
Pynchon sneaks the singularity concept into his description of Oneirine as well.
"There is in Laszlo Jamf's celebrated molecule a particular twist, the so-called "Pokler
singularity," occurring in a certain crippled indole ring, which later Oneirists,
41
academician and working professional alike, are generally agreed is responsible for the
hallucinations which are unique to this drug" (GR 703). The descriptions of the effects of
the drug Oneirine sound similar to some of the concepts, made strange by conventional
conceptions of time and space, of twentieth-century cosmology, as if the drug enables the
user to cross some threshold.
Describing the paranoia that is experienced under the drug, the narrator notes,
"Like other sorts of paranoia, it is nothing less than the onset, the leading edge, of the
discovery that everything is connected, everything in the Creation, a secondary
illumination -- not yet blindingly One, but at least connected, and perhaps a route In for
those like Tchitcherine who are held at the edge ..." (GR 703). Recall that Oneirine is
linked to the color mauve and coal-tar -- formed at the interface between two opposites -discussed by Walter Rathenau during the séance. Thus, Pynchon posits a connectedness
in the symbolic alternatives to the scientific method that he presents; a connectedness that
does not require causality.
Another area of particular interest to Pynchon, which appears in both Gravity's
Rainbow and Mason & Dixon, is the union of humans/animals and technology. Pynchon
uses this device to comically illustrate the Western world's love affair with Science.
During Slothrop's excursion into the labyrinths of the Mittelwerke, the soldiers he
encounters happily sexualize the rocket. "Each young American in turn getting to his feet
(optional), raising his tankard, and singing about different ways of Doing It with the A4
or its related hardware" (GR 306). Thus the production of a series of Rocket Limericks:
"There once was a young fellow named Crockett,/ Who had an affair with a rocket./ If
42
you saw them out there/ You'd be tempted to stare,/ But if you ain't tried it, don't knock
it! (GR 305).
The Hansel and Gretel-based love triangle between Blicero, Gottfried and Katje
ends in Hansel/Gottfried, rather than the witch/Blicero being consumed in flames, and
Gottfried's final union with Rocket 00000 serves as the climactic moment of the novel,
unifying man and machine, along with many of the novel's plotlines. This scene suggests
not only that Science is leading man on a path to destruction, but that the release of
obliteration may be the only salve for the wounds it has created.
In addition to creating characters that seek physical union with the technological
products of science, Pynchon often lends human characteristics to products of
technology. In Gravity's Rainbow, Byron the Bulb takes on human traits, along with one
distinctly nonhuman one -- immortality. "This bulb is immortal! It's been around, in
fact, since the twenties, has that old-timery point at the tip and is less pear-shaped than
the more contemporary bulbs. Wotta history, this bulb, if only it could speak -- well, as a
matter of fact, it can speak" (GR 647).
The old-timery point on Byron represents another singularity, which in the
context of the Byron narrative suggests possible alternatives to Science and the militaryindustrial complex to which it is tied. Byron starts out his life in Bulb Baby Heaven,
where he begins plotting to organize all the Bulbs in several ambitious plots against the
humans. After drawing the attention of the cartel and escaping several attempts on his
life, he tries to explain to other bulbs that Bulb should move beyond the role assigned it
by the cartel, that of a conveyor of light-energy. "'But there are other frequencies, above
43
and below the visible band. Bulb can give heat. Bulb can provide energy for plants to
grow, illegal plants, inside closets, for example. Bulb can penetrate the sleeping eye, and
operate among the dreams of men" (GR 653). But although his knowledge increases and
"someday he will know everything" he is powerless to act because the dictates of the
scientific-military-industrial complex prescribe his function (GR 655).
As described above, Pynchon sexualizes technology and blurs the boundaries
between humans/animals and machines, animate and inanimate. His frequent references
to the unconventional sexual escapades of Slothrop and others often draw attention to the
boundary-crossing that is inherent in the various sex acts he describes. The orgy scene
aboard the Anubis is particularly notable for its detailed and indulgent description of the
many instances of sexual boundary crossing.
Pynchon's revolutionary undertaking in Gravity's Rainbow is highlighted by the
fact that each of the novel's four sections represents a different boundary crossing. In
section one, Beyond the Zero, the crossing is clear in the title. Section two, Un Perm' au
Casino Hermann Goering, begins after Slothrop crosses the English Channel. His ability
to predict the locations of V2 rocket strikes is linked to his physical presence in London;
when he crosses the Channel his ability is no longer traceable. Section three represents
Slothrop's passage into the Zone, with internal passages from one section of the Zone to
the other stressed throughout. Finally, Section four, The Counterforce, is linked to the
passage of several of the characters out of the grip of the They-system and into the
resistance and the attempted creation of a We-system.
44
Pynchon uses images from science in Gravity's Rainbow to challenge Science
through the identification of anomalies and the deconstruction of its symbolic order. In
Mason & Dixon, Pynchon examines Science writ large as Mason and Dixon split the
New World down the middle, creating a giant binary opposition, the boundary of which
is the scene of the majority of the novel's spirited shenanigans and the development of the
title characters' memorable friendship.
45
III. Mason & Dixon
Mason & Dixon, in many ways, seems like the inevitable masterpiece to follow
Gravity's Rainbow, at once a crystallization of Pynchon's ideas about the limitations of
Science and a return to perhaps the most archetypal American scientific endeavor -albeit one that had previously been largely overlooked.
The narrative inspiration for Mason & Dixon, as in the case of Gravity's Rainbow,
is found in a scientific endeavor. Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon are brought
together, first, to observe the 1761 Transit of Venus and later to draw the American
boundary that made its way into the popular imagination as the Mason-Dixon line.
The narrative structure is much more straightforward than that in Gravity's
Rainbow, with the story of Mason and Dixon taking the form of an imbedded narrative.
The presumed narrator, Reverend Wicks Cherrycoke, has been living at the home of his
sister and her family for several months, having journeyed to Philadelphia for Mason's
funeral. There is also a third, outer, layer of narrative, the narrator of which, for instance,
describes the scene at the LeSpark home and informs us that Cherrycoke "arriv'd here
back in October for the funeral of a Friend of years ago, -- too late for the Burial, as it
prov'd" (M&D 6). And Cherrycoke seems to have no desire to bury Mason, Dixon or his
memories of them, but instead spins their tale for his nieces and nephews, referring
occasionally to his daybook for details.
46
As with Gravity's Rainbow, superimposed upon Mason & Dixon is the image of a
geometric shape. The narrative is more linear than that in Gravity's Rainbow, and the
majority of the narrative is concerned with laying down the line ... using the stars to
impose a straight mark upon the surface of the earth. The line serves as a giant symbol of
the division and subdivision that is characteristic of Science. And yet, although the
negative associations with Science that are established in Gravity's Rainbow are also
present in Mason & Dixon, Pynchon's depiction of the title characters sympathetically
justifies the rise of scientific culture. The boundary endeavor becomes more than merely
an assignment, with first one, then the other of the pair being overtaken with lust for
westward movement beyond the agreed-upon stopping point. It is in this desire that the
physical line and all of the symbolism that the modern reader associates with it is
juxtaposed with and measured against the ideal and infinite line dreamt up by its creators.
The two major endeavors that Mason and Dixon undertake, observing the Transit
of Venus and running the Mason-Dixon line, both symbolic crossings, push the world
further into modernity and advance the Enlightenment agenda.
After the failed attempt to sail to Bencoolen, Mason and Dixon observe the
Transit of Venus in Cape Town, South Africa, where, surrounded by the lascivious
Vroom girls, the astronomers' excitement about the Transit spills over into the town. And
as the narrator observes, imagining a hypothetical frolicsome exchange among laypeople
observing the Transit, somewhere in the world, "This, or odd behavior like it, is going on
all over the World all day long that fifth and sixth of June, in Latin, in Chinese, in Polish,
47
in Silence ... Observers lie, they sit, they kneel, -- and witness something in the Sky"
(M&D 95).
Astronomers spread out at points throughout the world observed the Transit and
recorded "four Instants of perfect Tangency between Venus's Disk, and the Sun's" (M&D
97). That is, external and internal contact at ingress and internal and external contact at
egress. As Mason explains, "One day, someone sitting in a room will succeed in
reducing all the Observations, from all 'round the World, to a simple number of Seconds,
and tenths of a Second, of Arc, -- and that will be the Parallax" (M&D 93).
And while Mason, ever the melancholy one of the two, records his observations
with solemnity, Dixon exclaims at first sight "Eeh! God in his Glory!" reporting later
that watching the Transit was "seeing not only our Creator about his Work ... but Newton
and Kepler, too, confirm'd in theirs. The Arrival, perfectly as calculated, the three bodies
sliding into a single Line ... Eeh, it put me in a Daze for fair" (M&D 98).
In America, Mason and Dixon bravely traverse the countryside, surrounded by
country dwellers more and less enthusiastic about the boundary line, with some
previously oblivious to it and others scheming up land plots that will benefit from
establishment of firm state boundary lines. Add to this often hostile Native Americans,
blood-hungry pioneers, revolutionaries and otherworldly creatures, and a general idea is
acquired of the pre-union chaos through which the line is drawn.
Pynchon's selection of surveying as a topic is no surprise, as the act itself is a
physical parallel to the mental dividing and categorizing that reason and scientific
thought valorize. Here, Mason and Dixon arrive in a hitherto undivided land, and make
48
official the boundary that divides North from South and defines the shape -- and later, is
symbolic of the values -- of those spaces with arbitrary names like Maryland and
Pennsylvania. As with the holocaust in Gravity's Rainbow, the horrors of the American
institution of slavery, which culturally is strongly associated with the Mason-Dixon line,
stands as a largely unspoken warning of the evils of the actual and symbolic dividing line.
The sentiment that Pynchon is attempting to capture -- and then, of course, quietly
obliterate -- is similar to that captured in this 1931 reflection on the science of
measurement: "The measuring stick is the scepter in the hand of science; a tool of
discovery, a means of record and an example of the exact use of knowledge. The gradual
rise in the art of measurement gave no sign that in this century it would reach a
commanding place in human affairs" (Hubbard qtd. in Kiely 356).
Whereas the scientists in Gravity's Rainbow are largely undeveloped and their
science-inspired Achilles heels clearly demarcated, the title characters of this novel are
depicted with both compassion and affection. The seeds of their love for science, as well
as their aspirations, are depicted without condescension. Dixon, who hails from Durham
county, is primarily a surveyor, but assures Mason, Assistant to the Astronomer Royal,
"I've been taught the lot, Celestial Mechanics, all the weighty lads, Laplace and Kepler,
Aristarchus, the other fellow, what's his name, -- but that's all Trigonometry, isn't it ... ?"
(M&D 17).
Mason, who heads up the expeditions, with Dixon formally assisting, though they
carry on as equals, has himself served as assistant to the Astronomer Royal, where he
assisted in making and recording observations. As a child, Mason's interest in studying
49
the stars was met with staunch disapproval. Young Mason's father tries to make him into
a breadmaker like himself. "[H]e would speak of duties to Charlie, who'd go along with
it, tho' pulled at, the miller could tell, by something else, pull'd away from the silent
loaves and the rumbling stones, out to London, the stars, the sea, India" (M&D 205).
Mason's father refers to him, scornfully mocking, as "the little Starrrgazer." Young
Mason, in turn, is terrified of the baker's trade and its sacramental associations, and
wonders, "[is] he fleeing to the repetitions of the Sky, believing them safer, not as
saturated in life and death?" (M&D 205). Perhaps Mason, in studying the sky, seeks to
comfort himself with belief in an afterlife. As Rebekah's ghost reminds him, "You
believ'd, when you were a boy, that the Stars were Souls departed" (M&D 172).
Dixon spent his young adulthood enjoying the "merry Life of a Journeyman
Surveyor, errant all through the North country, one Great Land-Holding to another ... tho'
spaces not yet enclos'd would ever make him uneasy" (M&D 241). Following his father's
death when he was 22, Dixon's grief made him reckless: "He was turning into a Country
Lout, soon to be beyond reclamation" (M&D 241). His craft was his salvation: "Jeremiah
found himself indoors, perfecting his Draftsmanship, bending all day over the work table
... preparation he would once rashly have hurried 'round or in great part omitted, was now
necessary, absolutely necessary, to do right.” He spent his time painstakingly creating a
map of an imaginary world, "a Map entirely within his mind, of a World he could escape
to, if he had to." His map would allow him to travel this world and never get lost,
through "Mountain of Glass, Sea of Sand, miraculous Springs, Volcanoes, Sacred Cities,
50
mile-deep Chasm, Serpent's Cave, endless Prairie ... another Chapbook-Fancy with each
Deviation and Dip of the Needle" (M&D 242).
Despite the pure intentions of Mason and Dixon, there remain the occasional
suspicions, much less pervasive than in Gravity's Rainbow, of an unknown They-system,
often associated with Science, either masterminding their actions or plotting against
them. Following the attack of the Seahorse by French, Dixon remarks, suspiciously,
"Happen ... we were never meant at all to go to Bencoolen, -- someone needed a couple
of Martyrs, and we inconveniently survived .. ?" (41). Mason suggests their talents are
being used as part of a Jesuit plot ... and Dixon questions how a baker's son became
Assistant to the Astronomer Royal and himself, a "Georgie Land-Surveyor get to be his
Second on the most coveted Star-gazing Assignment of the Century? Happen 'twas my
looks? ... they charm ... ? Or are we being us'd, by Forces invisible even to thy Invisible
College?" (M&D 73).
When Mason fails to receive the Astronomer Royal position, Dixon feels obliged
to set him straight, thinking, "[e]ither Mason here cannot admit there's a Class problem
here, or, even this deeply compromised, he may yet somehow keep Faith that in the
service of the Heavens, dramatic elevations of Earthly Position are to be expected of
these Times, this Reign of Reason, by any reasonable man. Very well, 'Mason, you are a
Miller's Son. That can never satisfy them'" (M&D). Here again, although the oppressive
force is made clear, Dixon's statement that it can never satisfy them leaves cloudy its
ultimate source, suggesting, as in Gravity's Rainbow that even the purest scientific
51
endeavors are co-opted and controlled by an overarching and only partially definable
They-system.
Other scientists are presented with less than pure aspirations, with the half-crazed
Maskelyne, brother of the famed Clive of India, seeking -- and gaining -- the undeserved
role of Astronomer Royal, a perceived coup that Mason fancies part of a plot: "Is that
what this fucking exile in America's about then, Morton and his fucking Royal Society, - to get me out of the way so that Maskelyne can go prancing up to Greenwich freed of
opposition, --" (M&D 438).
Just as in Gravity's Rainbow, the line between the living and dead is sometimes
permeable in Mason & Dixon, with Mason's late wife Rebekah making periodic
appearances from the other side. Although Mason seems to be trying to get some
information about her fate from the Learned English Dog, he gets no information about
her until she appears to him in ghostly form in St. Helena, upon the Windward Side,
surrounded by the same sort of magical wind that is referred to in Gravity's Rainbow.
When he first begins hearing her voice, "[h]e tries to joke with himself. Isn't this
suppos'd to be the Age of Reason?" He suggests that " to believe in the cold light of this
all-business world that Rebekah haunts him" is akin to blasphemy. "But if Reason be
also Permission at last to believe in the evidence of our Earthly Senses, then how can he
not concede to her some Resurrection?" (M&D 164).
During her first visit she inquires about what he is doing and he gives an
explanation of the observations he is collecting, explaining that two people are required
for the task " -- and I must do as others direct." To which she replies, enigmatically, "But
52
wait till you're over here, Mopery" (M&D 165). This response is arguably similar to the
sentiments of the dead channeled in Gravity's Rainbow, indicating that the obsession with
cause and effect, the dividing and categorizing that consume the living are irrelevant after
death.
Mason and Dixon are portrayed as men of reason who are subject to frequent
lapses of calculated judgment -- and a return to belief in fantasy and magic, to which, try
as they will to fight it, they maintain equal allegiance. Pychon's portrayal of this struggle
serves as a gentler attack on Science in that it suggests even Enlightenment scientists
struggled to make it fit.
Dixon shames Mason against his reluctance to set sail in the Seahorse on Friday,
the day of Christ's execution, saying, "Mason, pray You, -- 'tis the Age of Reason .. we're
Men of Science. To huz must all days run alike, the same number of identical Seconds,
each proceeding in but one Direction, irreclaimable ... ? If we would have Omens, why,
let us recall that the Astronomer's Symbol for Friday is also that of the planet Venus
herself, -- a good enough Omen, surely ...?" (M&D 27). The Seahorse, of course, is
attacked by the French, splashing doubt on the reliability of reason -- or at the very least,
highlighting its inability to prevent attacks at sea and the other unpredictable events of
life from taking place. Notably, Dixon points out the linear nature of time as it is
understood in the Age of Reason ... it runs in but one direction, in this case, just as does
the Seahorse. Yet knowledge of this does nothing to predict or prevent those things that,
moving forward, one might find blocking the way.
53
Again and again, "'Tis the Age of Reason!'" each reminds the other, always in the
face of some thing or circumstance entirely unreasonable, though, often, to all senses
true. Such persistent lack of fit between Mason and Dixon's default systems of belief and
the title that allegedly crowns the age they live in suggests that the "Age of Reason" is, at
least for this pair, prescriptive rather than descriptive. Thus, reason becomes a dictate,
imposed upon the unwary from on high, with the eighteenth century serving as a training
period, and Mason and Dixon fashioned as an anticipatory Petri dish for cultivation of the
disease of Science that wreaks havoc in Gravity's Rainbow.
Mason and Dixon seek evidence of magic, despite reminding themselves
repeatedly that, as men of science, that ought not to believe in it. Mason, while in Cape
Town, experiences repeated dreams of "some presence with a Krees or Malay Dagger, of
indistinct speech, yet clear intention to Dowse for the Well-Spring of Mason's Blood"
(M&D 70). Austra sends him to talk to an Asian Pygmy of a Malay tribe to learn how to
protect himself. "It is at some point that night, after securing the second Altitude of
Shaula, that the Astronomers agree to share the Data of their Dreams whenever possible"
(M&D 71).
The next time Mason has the dream, he confronts his assailant, and following the
instructions of the Pygmy sage, demands the Krees. Mason awakes to find the dagger
laying beside him in bed. Though Dixon suggests it may be a prank played by the Vroom
girls, the mystery is left unsolved and Mason and Dixon are again left tottering between
their desire for magic and their allegiance to reason.
54
Pynchon fills the narrative with references to the minutiae of eighteenth-century
science and culture, several of which provide challenges to or alternative versions of lines
and thus suggest alternatives to Science.
Captain Zhang, himself reliant upon the tenets of Chinese geomancy, suggests
drawing a dividing line among the people one desires to rule will ensure their indefinite
domination, Bad History being the only requirement for an indefinite reign. "Nothing
will produce Bad History more directly nor brutally, than drawing a Line, in particular a
Right Line, the very Shape of Contempt, through the midst of a People," warns Zhang
(M&D 615).
Ancient Chinese wisdom holds that "neither Heaven nor Earth is complete in
itself, and it is left to Man, the mediator between the two, to complete things and bring
them to perfection," the idea being that man will "correct the natural outlines of the
earth's surface to a more perfect configuration" (Skinner 36). As Zhang argues, this
involves paying close attention to the original form of the natural landscape: "Ev'rywhere
else on earth, Boundaries follow Nature, -- coast-lines, ridge-tops, river-banks, -- so
honoring the Dragon or Shan within, from which Land-Scape ever takes its form. To
mark a right Line upon the Earth is to inflict upon the Dragon's very Flesh, a swordslash" (M&D 542). The line that Mason and Dixon are running is the projection of a
geometrical concept upon the surface of the earth, without regard for the existing
geography.
Pynchon's inclusion of Dixon's adventures flying along ley-lines, the term itself
an anachronism, provides an interesting foil to the carefully drawn Mason-Dixon line.
55
Led by William Emerson, who the narrator observes, is easily imagined as a wizard,
students are taught how to sense, the line. "The Ley seems to generate, along its length,
an Influence, -- palpable as that of Earth's Magnetism upon a Needle" (M&D 218).
The term ley lines -- descriptive of alignments of prehistoric sites and natural
landmarks across Britain -- was actually not coined until 1921. At this time, Alfred
Watkins noted the alignment of these ancient monuments and began studying them.
Although the phenomenon is often relegated today to discussions of mysticism, which in
the West is increasingly marginalized, researchers in the 1920s argued that the ley system
was connected with "a former code of mystical science which acknowledged the
existence of energy streams across the earth and the part they play in the renewal of life
on this planet" (Michell 8).
Dixon later makes use of another of Emerson's teachings to balance the tub they
are preparing to steal from the Lepton estate upon a mysterious axis. Dixon explains:
"Laws of Leverage ... Secret techniques of mechanickal Art, rescued from the Library at
Alexandria, circa 390 A.D., before rampaging Christians could quite destroy it all,
jealously guarded thereafter, solemnly handed down the Centuries from Master to Pupil"
(M&D 423). In this reference to a classical text, perhaps some fictional text of
Archimedes, being secretly rescued and passed down to land in the Age of Reason,
Pynchon takes a jab at the intellectual presumptiveness of the age via his own Tale of a
Tub, an absurd blend of science and fantasy that vaguely recalls Jonathan Swift's satirical
essay of the same name. In Pynchon's version, the tub is a bath tub, the whale a torpedo
... and the scene ridiculous.
56
Talk of Emerson's exploits draws comparison to the exploits of the German
doctor Franz Anton Mesmer, whose sham electromagnetic treatments and apparent
ability to hypnotize brought him fame on both sides of the Atlantic (Wolf 494). Pynchon
highlights this apparent eighteenth century reluctance to let go of magic. Instead the
order of the day is to preserve it -- but dress it up in the trappings of science, thereby
cementing faith in reason, which, at least temporarily, can be believed to produce
wonders equal to those it forbids.
Pynchon includes several machines and animals that take on human
characteristics, first among them the Learnèd English dog, with whom both men seem
eager to converse. For Mason, the dog seems his most promising chance to learn about
Rebekah's possible fate, and he inquires as to whether the dog is in fact a human soul
reincarnated. To which the dog replies: "'Tis the Age of Reason, rrrf? There is ever an
Explanation at hand, and no such thing as a Talking Dog, -- Talking Dogs belong with
Dragons and Unicorns. What there are, however, are Provisions for Survival in a World
less fantastick'" (M&D 22). And so, a reasonable explanation is forthcoming: Learnèd is
merely an extreme expression of the canine strategy of acting as human as possible in
order to prevent humans from eating them. A statistical improbability, but an explanation
nonetheless, and one that seems to satisfy.
Jacques de Vaucanson's mechanical duck -- who humorously torments French
chef Armand Allègre -- has characteristics of both a living duck and a human. Based on
an actual mechanical duck created by the 18th century inventor, complete with digestive
system and demonstrable excretory functions, the duck in Mason & Dixon presumably
57
comes to life as Vaucanson adds an additional function. "Vaucanson's vainglorious
Intent had been to repeat for Sex and Reproduction, the Miracles he'd already achiev'd for
Digestion and Excretion," the narrator fills in. As Armand conjectures: "'Who knows?
that final superaddition of erotick Machinery may have somehow nudg'd the Duck across
some Threshold of self-Intricacy, setting off this Explosion of Change, from Inertia
toward Independence, and Power. Isn't it like an old Tale? Has an Automatick Duck,
like the Sleeping Beauty, been brought to life by the kiss of ... l'Amour?" (M&D 373).
The duck, having learned that it can become invisible by flying at sufficiently
high speeds, follows Vaucanson to America and then West along the line, variously
seeking love and revenge.
Vaucanson's contributions to the machine are plentiful; Pynchon, predictably,
chose to recreate a defecating duck (Wolf 41). Vaucanson's actual mechanical duck
"drank, ate, digested, cackled, and swam -- the whole interior apparatus of digestion
exposed, so that it could be viewed" (Florescu 233). Vaucanson was in the processes of
creating a similarly complex human automaton when he died.
The clocks scattered throughout Mason & Dixon are akin to the light bulbs that
appear in Gravity's Rainbow. In both cases symbolic of the technology of their day, the
clocks are able to communicate with one another, which seems fitting giving the
uniqueness attributed to them by British scientific tradition. As Dixon explains, the
French never rotate their instruments, but the British, in order to account for any unique
characteristics specific to each clock, exchange the clock's positions so as to perhaps
increase the accuracy of their observations.
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Thus the two clocks Mason, Dixon and Maskelyne are using for observations,
designated the Shelton Clock and the Ellicott Clock, have a few minutes to chat before
one is switched out for the other in preparations for Dixon's return to Cape Town.
Though they spend those moments trading information about what to expect in their
respective new homes, "what they wanted to talk about all along, was the Ocean ... Its
Wave-beats have ever been with them, yet can neither quite say, where up it they may lie.
What they feel is an Attraction, more and less resistible, to beat in Synchrony with it,
regardless of their Pendulum-lengths, or even the divisions of the Day" (M&D 123).
Pynchon uses these products of technology to poignantly suggest the redundancy
of many of man's creations. Technology allows us to create a mechanical duck with
excretory functions just like a real duck .. and clocks that mimic the ocean in creating the
rhythms by which humans structure their lives. Further, both the duck and the clocks
harbor desires more elegant than those evidenced by the fact of their creation. The duck
is obsessed by love, while her inventor is smitten with the idea of replicating duck
excrement. The duck's desire, as the clock's Attraction to the ocean, trumps the intentions
of the humans that create and use them. Science, Pynchon argues, has led Western man
away from the essential beauty of being alive.
As in Gravity's Rainbow, the sections in Mason & Dixon each correspond to one
or more boundary crossing of some sort. The main action and impetus of Section One:
Latitudes and Departures is the Transit of Venus. Section Two: America opens just as
Mason and Dixon, having crossed the Atlantic, arrive in the New World. This section is
concerned with drawing the Mason-Dixon line. Section Three: Last Transit begins as the
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two arrive back in England, having reversed their Westward passage and again crossed
the Atlantic. This section contains the second Transit of Venus, along with the final
transit for both Mason and Dixon, into death.
In Mason & Dixon, Pynchon depicts the Western world as it crosses into the
realm of Science, discarding questions and beliefs that are not easily contained within or
easily explained by it. As I have illustrated above, the sympathetic treatment of Mason
and Dixon contrasts dramatically with the aggressive attack on Science in Gravity's
Rainbow. Whereas the characters in Gravity's Rainbow -- even those who are struggling
against the sterile assumptions of Science -- and their relationships are largely hollow,
Pynchon creates in Mason & Dixon a sympathetic story of human aspiration, of faith, and
above all, of friendship. Far more than any of Pynchon's other alternatives to Science,
the friendship of Mason and Dixon holds the most substantial value of anything in the
either Gravity's Rainbow or Mason & Dixon. In section four, I discuss how this fits into
the revolutionary intentions I have claimed for Pynchon above.
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IV. Conclusion
Upon the publication of Mason & Dixon in 1997, a review published in the
Raleigh News and Observer made mention of rumors, years before Pynchon published
the novel, "that the reclusive genius was walking the Mason-Dixon line" (Duyfhuizen 1).
I imagine some aged version of the young bucktoothed Pynchon who appears, peering
out of those high school photos to which Pynchon aficionados cling for verification that
his stories are the novelistic product of a living being, rather than some spontaneous
hallucination, walking along, knapsack on his back, some modern version of the
daybook, perhaps, in hand. This image has stayed with me and it is, I feel, useful in
understanding what Mason & Dixon, coming as it did years after Gravity's Rainbow, can
teach us about Pynchon's philosophy of science.
What, then, can we find along this line that gives some instruction? Surely as he
walked Pynchon considered the science that went into laying the Mason-Dixon line ...
and possibly, given the plethora of negative associations with which he loads Science in
Gravity's Rainbow, he linked the very act of dividing with slavery, war, destruction. Or
maybe, walking the latitude alone, Pynchon reflected on how very easy it must have been
to decide which way to go when faced only with a choice of forwards or back.
Mason & Dixon stands in contrast to Gravity's Rainbow in that, even as it
chastises Science for excluding entire realms of human experience, it uses human nature
and longing to justify its rise. It depicts the constraining process of the rise of Science, of
weeding out the experience of magic, of spirituality and of faith, in exchange for the
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promise of the power of knowledge and the comfort of control. In Mason & Dixon, the
sterility of Science has not yet set in because in many ways, Science assumes the role of
magic and all of its wonders. But by the time of the twentieth century, as depicted in
Gravity's Rainbow, Science has leeched the magic out. The intense friendship depicted
in Mason & Dixon is replicated nowhere in Gravity's Rainbow. Thus, Mason & Dixon
serves as apologia for the rise of Science, but despite the sympathetic treatment, the
critique of Science stands.
As Kuhn explains, scientific revolutions occur only after the dominant scientific
paradigm is effectively replaced by an alternate paradigm (144). While Pynchon is fairly
clear in his assertions of the limitations of Science, his proposals for a replacement are
highly abstract, tending to suggest, when they are expressible at all, the ability to achieve
some sort of release or spiritual oneness through chaos, anarchy and obliteration.
Pynchon's efforts to subvert Science, though symbolically persuasive, are reminiscent of
early attempts by feminist writers to envision an alternate ending for their female
characters: wanting to resist marrying their heroine off, but, being but unable to imagine
an alternate future, they decided most often just to kill her.
This dead end, as it were, is suggestive of arguments that postmodernism has, in
practice, limited utility in that it provides no viable alternatives. And yet, as Pynchon so
disturbingly argues, Science and the continued adherence to it has dramatic
consequences. Pynchon is quite keenly aware of the dilemma we find ourselves in, and
his use of overlapping and alternating symbols of destruction and redemption in Gravity's
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Rainbow darkly suggest the possibility that the only way out of the increasingly global
paradigm of Science is by following it through to a conclusion of absolute obliteration.
Despite Pynchon's attacks on Science, his repeated reliance on scientific thought
within his novels reveals a deep ambivalence. It is ironic and unfortunate that Pynchon's
inclusion of scientific material within his novels causes many literary types to shy away.
Those readers who might feel most strongly Pynchon's pleas for alternative ways of
knowing along with our universe of scientific thought, the ones who harbor this impulse
as if in their blood, are too often made hemophiliacs at the site of the first equation in
Gravity's Rainbow. Which raises the question of why Pynchon includes such material in
his novels in the first place.
Gravity's Rainbow begins with the following quote from German rocket engineer
Wernher von Braun: "Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation.
Everything science has taught me, and continues to teach me, strengthens my belief in the
continuity of our spiritual existence after death" (GR 2). Pynchon's critique in Gravity's
Rainbow and Mason & Dixon suggests that Science, in ignoring those realms of
experience that it is powerless to describe, forbids belief in spiritual existence altogether.
And yet, Pynchon's incorporation of theories of the oscillating universe, his insistence on
rebirth through annihilation, his repeated inclusion of ghosts, séances and otherworldly
visitors suggest otherwise.
And even as Pynchon denounces Science as the end of all unmediated human
experience, the sterilizer of human emotions and a path of certain doom, his obsession
reveals him. Maybe it is some version of his old glee in entropy, a dark joy in
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destruction. Certainly, Pynchon's dabblings in science bring him at least the joy in
creation that Dixon finds in his maps of indigo and verdigris, with their mountains of
glass and seas of sand. Whatever inspires his twisted allegiance, I can only hope that
whichever direction science next takes, Pynchon will be there to narrate it, strapped to its
nose, whooping and hollering all the way.
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Circular
narrative
chronology
Parabolic
arch of V2
Figure 1
Conical Shape of Narrative in Gravity's Rainbow
68
Figure 2
Diagram of Black Hole
Source: Penrose
69
Figure 3
Diagram of Schwartzchild Black Hole
Source: Hamilton
70